So did I understand it right, that when I buy my german Windows Vista at my local store I will get all the other different localizations right with it on the DVD ? So I can switch the whole UI and everything that is related to that culture to Latvian,
Mongolian or whatever? If so, does that mean that the only real difference between an USA Windows Vista and a German Windows Vista is the carton around it ?
I am asking because, we could then test our localized applications, without having tons of different windows installations on our testmachines.

Hi Bonk,

The exact SKU packaging has not yet been announced, so it is unclear exactly what it will look like. Though it is unlikely that every single UI language will ship in the one releaze, for several reasons, such as:

* not all of them are done and ready at the same time.* customers who do not want all languages will want a "cheaper" version without all languages bundled (this happens now with Proofing Tools)

But the truth is that the architecture now supports the idea of packages that can be installed to add languages easily, and there are several targeted SKUs that many OEMs will want for multgilingual locations like Canada and Switzerland, and several other scenarios
are being considered as the SKU decisions are being made....

For developers, the traditional mechanism for such things has been MSDN, so they are a good place to keep an eye on for future plans in this area.

You know perfectly well who is on the shirt since you and I both saw her at a show several years back -- she was opening for the Kinks in Boston, I believe? And you said you had a nice time, to boot!

For everyone else, it was Aimee Mann on the shirt. My shirts are at this point divided evenly between singer/songwriters and US intelligence agencies; the shirt I was wearing that day fell into the former category, obviously!

Is there any way we can get hold of the the .NET 2.0 sample application sourcecode shown first in that video (the one that listed all the cultures). It seems a good app to get to know .NET globalisation.

Ah, the Culture Explorer that Francois Liger wrote is indeed an excellent sample for viewing locale data!

The original one is a GotDotNet sample that was posted some time ago in both VB.Net and C# forms. It is still there, in fact.

The one that better supports 2.0 (based on the one I demo'ed in the video) will be available shortly; Francois is working on it and promises it will be done soon. I will post about it in my blog when it happens.

Very interesting. I have a doubt about globalization: How does Microsoft choose the languages a beta product as Windows Vista will be shipped? I heard Vista Beta 2 will be in German and Japanese. How have these languages been chosen?

The initial languages are pilot languages, ones that are done early to find localizability issues. This is actually an excellent topic, one that I will put on my list for a future blog post to try to give more detail....